


Last Month's Host

by rallamajoop



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Other, Pining, She-Venom - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-27 18:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18744478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/pseuds/rallamajoop
Summary: A missing scene from the movie where Anne and Venom (attempt to) rush to Eddie’s rescue, taking time along the way to discuss Eddie, the relative fashionability of being caught in last month’s host, Eddie, why a woman like Anne would date a guy like Eddie anyway, sex, relationships, and also Eddie Brock.





	Last Month's Host

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [Quakey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quak3y/pseuds/Quakey) and [Skull_Bearer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer) for betaing for me.

Eddie meets Venom ( _properly_ —face to face, or near enough) while soaking wet, slumped on a dock on the wrong side of the bay after the ride-of-his-life comes to a bone-crunching conclusion.

Anne meets Venom later the same night in a disabled toilet cubicle, having staggered in and locked the door after a truly disorienting encounter with a small, fluffy dog in the hospital corridor. 

Eddie's parasite has a face like a living nightmare on a neck of liquid flesh. It speaks in a voice like an oil fire, dragging out its vowels as if it wants to hear them suffer before letting them go. 

_**Hello**_ **,** _ **Anne.**_

Anne is not in the habit of _whimpering_. She damn well whimpers now. "Oh... _god_..." 

Venom grins at her. It is very, very well equipped for grinning. **You** _ **care**_ **for Eddie Brock,** it oozes, as if pronouncing her greatest weakness. 

"You were _killing_ him!" Anne protests, if admittedly a bit weakly. 

This seems to throw the apparition off its stride. **We were not** _ **killing him!**_ **Why would we kill our own host? He was fine!**

"You call _that_ fine? You _atrophied_ his heart!" 

**So we nibbled on a few organs,** grumbles a living oil fire which has inexplicably found itself on the defensive. **We were going to rebuild them all during his next sleep cycle! How were we supposed to know which ones were important?**

Anne can hardly believe what she's hearing. "Uh, you could have _asked_?" 

Venom makes a noise of frustration that ripples backwards down its neck with some force. **This is irrelevant! If you really** **cared for Eddie, you should be** _ **more**_ **concerned with the** _ **armed men**_ **who dragged him out of here, a prisoner!**

Anne is presented with a sudden, startling vision of Eddie being tasered into unconsciousness and carried into an elevator—the colours washed out into muted yellows and blues, the angle low and broken, as if being viewed by someone with a very big nose. In a flash of understanding, it comes to Anne that this is a dog's-eye-view of Eddie's abduction. The disquieting thought occurs that this creature may not, in fact, be lying. 

**Minions of the Life Foundation,** pronounces Venom. **They have pursued us across your city.** _ **I**_ **could have protected him! But** _ **no**_ **, you had to separate us. To leave him** _ **vulnerable**_ **.**

Parts of Anne consider some more whimpering, but it would be a pretty poor lawyer who sat there and took an accusation like that. "You were killing _Dan!_ Were you going to put _his_ throat back after you were done crushing it?" 

**I will do much worse to the next being to come between me and Eddie!** A mess of angry vibration, Venom draws itself up until its floating head towers above her. **His life is in** _ **your**_ **hands now, Anne. I have no time to waste on uncooperative hosts.** With a gravity that suggests Venom has at last reached the question it has been building to from the beginning, it asks, _**Will you help us?**_

With a feeling that sinks like a stone, Anne realises there is only one possible answer. And so begins what is to be the most surreal episode in what is, by far, the most surreal episode in Anne's life to date. 

* * *

Forget alien parasites, forget the Life Foundation—forget even the man's own questionable judgement—right now, the single greatest threat to Eddie's life and limb might just be downtown San Francisco traffic. 

Anne drums her fingers on the steering wheel and tries to estimate her chances of making it through the light on the next change. She doesn't like her odds. The GPS doesn't seem that optimistic either. 

Beneath her skin, Venom seethes quietly, like the beginning of a headache. Anne contemplates the irony of being stuck with a passenger who can turn into a seven-foot monstrosity, whose only weaknesses include fire, sounds of a certain frequency, and inner-city traffic jams. The thought fails to amuse her very much, though the idea that Eddie's kidnappers may very well be stuck in the same jam only a block or two ahead does grant her a mild, vicious satisfaction. 

_Jesus_. Would it be faster to get out and walk? How fast can Venom walk, anyway? 

Probably not fast enough to avoid being noticed by every person with a cell phone between here and the foundation, unfortunately. 

**It is better that we do not show ourselves until we must,** Venom agrees, reluctantly. Anne has yet to decide whether hearing his voice inside her own head is more or less disturbing than the full floating-head-experience, and doesn't relish the thought that she's going to have plenty of time to decide. **You are not nearly so good a match as Eddie. He would not be pleased had we rescued him only by ravaging your system.**

"Wow. Touching." 

A pause. **We would not be pleased either.**

"Okay. Better." 

**He** _ **cares**_ **for you.** Venom's emphasis suggests he finds the way Eddie still cares for Anne about as palatable as Anne does. Or perhaps he just wants to communicate he's about as enthusiastic about the very concept of _caring_ about as your average disaffected teenager. **He cares for many strange things we do not understand, but not as he cares for you.**

_Didn't care enough not to throw it all away, did he?_ Barely has the thought crossed her mind before Anne has tamped down on it hard, fervently hoping her passenger hadn't heard. There are a thousand possible answers she could give him, and none that she has the least desire to get into with an alien parasite while stuck in traffic. 

**You are fortunate we have had time to learn your species' nature from such a perfect host. Before Eddie, our hosts were not so lucky. The results were... unfortunate.**

Anne is hit by a wash of sense-memory of bodies contorting like something out of _The Exorcist_ , images rising like the taste of bile at the back of her throat. She thinks of the heat of Eddie's skin in the restaurant, his sallow skin, Dan's litany of symptoms and organ failure—and she shivers, then shakes her head. "Climbing into fish tanks and eating live lobster is your idea of 'perfect'?" 

**I would like to see** _ **you**_ **do better after six months of near-starvation in a series of dying host bodies in a toxic atmosphere!** Venom seethes, which is just about enough to make Anne wonder whether (in whatever bizarre nonsense wonderland she's been thrown into today) she's being a trifle unfair. **But Eddie is different. Even in our weakened state, his body welcomed us. Never have we had such a host. Had we tried every member of your species, we might not find another.**

_You're welcome to him_ , Anne thinks—but she thinks it quietly. No matter how much baggage she might be lugging around in the wake of Eddie Brock, she's not far gone enough to wish alien parasites on the man. Certainly not in a world where alien parasites are a disturbingly present fact rather than a figment of angry hyperbole. 

She does, unfortunately, _care_. 

The light goes green. The column of traffic ahead shifts forward by a handful of car lengths before grinding to a halt again. Anne grudgingly accepts that they're going to be here a while. More grudgingly still, she accepts that as long as she's not furiously breaking road rules in a mad chase to get to Eddie Brock before her alien passenger drives her stark raving mad, she has no good excuse _not_ to call Dan, who's probably worried himself half to death by now. With good reason. 

The mature, responsible thing to do now would be to call Dan and reassure him that she has absolutely not been infected by the same blob of evil, black goo that tried to strangle Dan himself not twenty minutes ago—that Eddie has absolutely not been tasered into unconsciousness and dragged out of the hospital by armed men—and that she, most of all, is _absolutely not_ on her way to start an argument with the men responsible. 

The problem is that this means lying to Dan, and Anne does not want to do that. Dan is a wonderful man who has been nothing but patient and supportive through all of this, and Anne emphatically does not want to be the sort of woman who lies to the man she loves to cover for her asshole ex-boyfriend. But she also doesn't want Dan to give himself a coronary wondering why she hasn't picked up her phone the last six times he's called her, and of the three bad options in front of Anne right now, _not_ calling him at all is the inarguable worst. 

Anne hits the button on her phone before she can talk herself out it. "I'm going to need some quiet," she tells Venom, and waits as the call goes through. 

Dan picks up almost immediately. "Anne? Where are you?" 

"Stuck in traffic. Listen," she takes a deep breath, "Eddie got himself picked up on his way out of the hospital. I'm on my way down to bail him out." 

"What? Jesus. How..." 

"Turns out he wasn't kidding about breaking into the Life Foundation last night." Oh, the joys of the _technically_ true statement, Anne thinks, and quietly hates herself. 

"Guess we should've seen that one coming," says Dan. "Anne, do you need backup?" 

"No—thanks, honey, but this one's on me." 

There's a pause; she can almost hear him thinking. "Annie, that thing we forced out of him... we need to know whether it's still loose in the hospital." 

"Well, I'm no expert,"—still technically true, if one whopper of a lie of omission—"but I don't think it's going to get very far without a host, and I have it on good authority that _Eddie's_ the only host it's interested in right now." 

"...Eddie? Why Eddie?" 

"There's some sort of, uh..." 

_**Compatibility issue**_ **.**

"Compatibility issue. Means it's not likely to try bonding with anyone else." 

**You can tell him I will not survive long in your atmosphere without a host. You will not be lying.**

"And apparently without a host, it's not going to survive very long. So. That's one less alien-loose-in-the-hospital for you to worry about." 

**Then later, perhaps you'll find the opportunity to use** _ **that**_ **weakness against us too.**

Venom's tone could just about cut glass. Anne has never been the world's greatest aficionado of science fiction, but can only reflect that whoever it was who came up with the idea aliens _wouldn't_ understand sarcasm was seriously deluding themselves. 

"Annie..." says Dan, carefully, "is there someone else there with you?" 

**Tell him I was not killing Eddie. Tell him what danger Eddie is in, thanks to his foolishness.**

Annie squeezes her eyes shut and exhales heavily. "Let's just say I have an inside source and that we're getting awfully close to lawyer-client confidentiality territory." 

"Message received," says Dan, obviously relieved. That's the wonderful thing about Dan—that's all it takes to get him to back off and _trust_ her with this. God, she wishes she deserved it. "Some team we make, huh? The doctor and the lawyer, saving Eddie Brock's ass twice in a day." 

"Let's hope so. I gotta go. Love you." No way in hell is Anne missing her chance to say those last two words, today of all days. 

"Love you too." The call cuts out. 

**Pathetic,** Venom grumbles, sounding about as pleased with the call as Anne is herself. **You could have had** _ **Eddie**_ **, yet you settle for that snivelling creature.**

Having just told some of the hardest lies of her non-professional life to 'that snivelling creature', Anne is in no mood to have her relationship judged by an immature goo alien. " _Hey_ —nobody's 'settling'. Eddie pushed me away long before Dan came into my life." 

**He would take you back. He did apologise.**

" _Really_ not the issue. God, why am I even trusting you? For all I know, you really _were_ killing him, and those people from the Life Foundation could be the best hope he's got of making it out of this!" 

There's a rumbling from Venom—not quite laughter, but close enough to warn Anne that that particular comeback could've used a little more thought. **Don't be foolish. You know what the Life Foundation is** — **what they did to Eddie. What he paid for getting too close to the truth. What they made** _ **you**_ **pay. You knew about the** _ **bodies**_ **long before Eddie did.**

Anne thumps her head back against the headrest. " _Jesus_ , okay! You've made your point." 

**Would you like to know how many new bodies they have buried since? Perhaps it's time you considered Eddie had the right of it from the beginning. And still you blamed** _ **him**_ **.**

"Because I _trusted_ Eddie!" Anne actually bangs the steering wheel. "Yes, the Life Foundation are scum—half our clients are scum! I don't get to pick who my firm works with, but Eddie-" 

**Should have let them get away with it?**

"I am not going to sit here and take a moral lecture from a... a _being_ I saw try to bite a man's head off!" 

Venom seethes silently for some time before muttering, _**Didn't**_ **bite his head off.**

It's only the absurd petulance of Venom's statement that allows Anne to look back on the scene she'd stumbled onto in the MNBN lobby without flinching internally. " _Eddie_ stopped you." 

**He did,** says Venom, without obvious resentment. **He seems to care a great deal for the lives of other humans. Even those who stand in his way.**

Anne briefly ponders whether this observation says more about _Eddie_ or more about _Venom_. "It's one of those weird human quirks," she says, mostly keeping this from coming out as sarcastic as it deserves to be. "You want Eddie to take you back, you'd better get used to it." 

**I would like to. You are a fascinating species.**

Huh. That one sounded positively sincere. Maybe there's hope for this goo-monster yet. "Back at you." 

Venom gives a pleased sort of rumble. **You have questions.** _ **Ask**_ **.**

Conflicting impulses of want-to-know and want- _not-_ to-know collide with Anne's better judgement. Prudence ultimately trumps the worst of her hesitation to stare deeper into the abyss: if her job has taught her anything that might apply here, it's that what you don't know can absolutely blindside you later. 

"So... hosts like Eddie are one in a million. You said that." 

**Correct.**

"But without one, you die?" 

**The match does not need to be perfect to be viable. Inhospitable systems can always be devoured,** says Venom, reasonably. **Experienced symbiotes can maintain an incompatible match for many days before the corrosion overcomes it. Longer, if we are not hungry. There are always new hosts.**

Anne feels her eyebrows winch upwards involuntarily. A few of the more memorably euphemistic phrases from the Life Foundation patient wavers begin wafting back from the edges of her memory. "So you just use them up and move on until you find your perfect match? Charming." _You saw him try to eat a man,_ Anne reminds herself. _What did you expect?_

**There is greater pride in a difficult conquest.** _ **Compatible**_ **hosts are the crutch of the weak.**

"Seriously?" No wonder Eddie calls Venom a 'he'; this is some of the most aggressively _male_ thinking Anne has ever heard. 

**Only the childish allow themselves to become attached. It is...** and here Anne can only assume that Venom's ability to pick idioms directly out of his host's brain is better than she'd given him credit for, _**unfashionable**_ **to be seen in last month's host.**

"Don't feel you're playing a little close to type, do you?" Anne tries to decide how she feels about this revelation. She ought to be horrified, but in practice, Venom has qualified for the same mental category as most of Anne's ( _firm's_ ) worst corporate clients. It's not like she hasn't heard CEOs say _worse_ things about their former employees. "So is this the bit where you convince me _you're_ the one who's different?" 

Presumably, they don't have that cliché on whatever rock Venom hails from, because there's no trace of irony in his response. **Always, I have been mocked for allowing my hosts too much influence, for my** _ **sentimentality**_ **. But never before have I had a host like Eddie.**

For a moment, Anne can almost _taste_ Venom's longing: disorienting, fathomless, with just a hint of something Anne can only compare to hormonally-fuelled ice cream cravings. Anne's stomach gurgles; the rest of her is less decided about its sympathies. "Wow." 

Venom isn't listening. **To think I intended to** _ **help**_ **them consume this planet! For what? I owe them nothing! We could be so much more without them.**

There's a sense this is a conversation Venom has had with himself before, but Anne isn't greatly interested. Not when she's busy processing the knowledge that Venom's weird fixation on Eddie Brock may yet become one of very few things standing between the human race and an alien invasion. It's no good: even her bad-client category has failed her. She gives up. She can't deal with this. Her ability to deal with this insane day officially topped out around the point Eddie's alien parasite started trying to get her back with him while stuck in traffic. 

"Look," she tells Venom, "far be it from me to get between Eddie and his next bad decision, but what makes you think you and Eddie are even on the same page here?" 

Venom's response is a roar. **Fool! I have been in his head! I have felt what he feels. Already, he has begun to relish being 'we'** — **to understand how much more we could be together! To** _ **trust**_ **me! How else could he have been so betrayed by the ideas you planted against us?**

Even as he speaks, though, Anne feels a rush of longing and loneliness—for better or worse, she's successfully planted a seed of doubt— _what if he rejects us again? No! We will find him! We will save him! We will show him how wrong he was to doubt us. And if he does not..._

A wash of flickering memories—being told ' _thank_ you', ' _that was_ cool'—the flush of anticipation right before Venom had enveloped him for the second time in the studio's lobby—' _what happened to "we"?_ '—the mess of emotions brought on by Anne's presence in the car, tantalising and strange—so many memories, so much left unfinished—oh, what _Venom_ would give to be thought of that way... 

But then there's the awful truth underlying the pain of being called _parasite_ : _no, give us a chance, we could be so much more..._

_No, Eddie will not reject us. He cannot. We will show them ALL the face of true symbiosis. Show them all what WE can achieve. That we were never weak, never foolish to be sentimental. Better to live an hour with our perfect host than an eternity as the_ parasite _he fears! Eddie will understand. He-_

The blaring of a horn in Anne's supernaturally-sensitised ears slices through Venom's reverie at a frequency _just_ on the edge of the critical MRI range. The light ahead is green. Anne swears, leans on the accelerator, and immediately stalls the car. It takes considerably more swearing to get the car started again, moving, and finally, gloriously, _through the intersection_ just on that wafer-thin margin between yellow and red, leaving the asshole with the horn behind them blaring helplessly at their tail. 

**Sorry,** says Venom, eventually. **We should not have let ourselves become distracted.**

"It's fine. Happens to the best of us." It is demonstrably _not_ fine. Anne is in no state to process a fraction of the feelings-dump she just received, but it's hard to believe it was _Eddie_ she was worried about a minute ago, and not the alien that's gone and given itself _Stockholm Syndrome_ after barely 24 hours of living in its 'perfect host's' head. 

Anne is not qualified for this. No-one on earth is qualified for this. 

For a while, they lapse into silence. Venom is the first to break it. 

**Tell us more about Eddie.**

Of _course_. Anne wants to laugh. "Weren't you just telling me you'd seen inside his mind?" 

**But you have had longer to know him. We want to know everything.**

"About Eddie?" She scoffs. "Where do I even start?" 

**The beginning.**

The beginning? Where does a lawyer meet a journalist? Outside a courthouse, obviously. But Anne doesn't usually count that part. They hadn't gotten to know one another until the first time—the _only_ time—they'd found themselves working the same case. Her client had been falsely accused and Eddie knew it—they both just needed _proof_ —and for three glorious weeks, they'd made a hell of a team. He'd needled her about her rich scumbag clients, she'd needled him back for muckraking for a living. He was so patently not her usual type that she hadn't even realised she was flirting until one celebratory drink too many somehow led to her telling him _what a shame_ it was he'd once-again gone and brought up the ( _unrelated_ , _long_ finished) Roxon case her firm had taken last year, because if he'd only lasted an another hour, she'd been planning to invite him home. Up to twenty seconds before, Anne had had no such plan—but the look on his face had been worth it. 

_"Miss Weying, did you just hit on me?"_

_Anne poked him with her toe. "Pay better attention, Brock. Not now you've blown it, I'm not."_

_"Alright, alright," he laughed, pushing away his drink. "Gonna have to pace myself if we're going to be here another hour."_

(They'd lasted forty minutes, then she'd taken him home.) 

Nowadays, conversations about Eddie tend to start at the end, like when the name of her ex first came up with Dan. 

_"Wait, you mean_ the _Eddie Brock? From the Brock Report?" he exclaimed. "Damn. I used to love that show."_

_Anne shrugged in sympathy. "You and me both."_

_Dan winced and wryly raised a toast. "Well, here's to never meeting your heroes."_

_Anne clinked his glass and said, "Just steer clear of their bitter exes and you'll probably do fine," which got her the laugh she was going for and successfully lightened the mood._

(Fortunately, Dan hadn't taken that advice.) 

Anne had spent the beginning of her relationship with Eddie wondering what the hell she was doing, and the end finding out. The good times were mostly in the middle. 

Back in the present, she asks Venom, "You want to hear about Eddie? Right now, I don't know which of you most needs warning off the other." No way is Anne about to encourage Eddie to keep Venom any longer than it takes to say thanks-for-saving-my-life, _or_ risk encouraging Venom in his own twisted infatuation. If there really _is_ a potential symbiote invasion on the cards, the earth will just have to build itself more MRI machines. 

**There is no need to be jealous, Anne,** says Venom, suggestively. **There will always be room for you.**

Anne snorts. "I'm not convinced there's room in a relationship with Eddie for anyone other than Eddie Brock anymore." 

Certainly no room for _professional commitments_ or _confidential emails_. Eddie Brock is his own biggest fan, best friend and worst enemy. Maybe that's part of the appeal to Venom: the only space _left_ in the man's life might well be inter-cellular. 

**Strange. You are worried, but you channel your fear into anger.**

Anne rolls her eyes. If Venom wants a better account of the man, he's come to completely the wrong person. "Oh come on; there was plenty of anger there to begin with." 

**But it is not just Eddie you are angry with. You are angry with yourself.**

"Oh my god," says Anne, seriously disbelieving. "So they have Psyche 101 on your planet too? Who knew?" 

**I am in your head, Anne.**

Anne gives in. "Fine, yes, I'm angry at myself too! I _knew_ what kind of guy Eddie was from the beginning, and I was still stupid enough to get involved. And look where it got me!" 

Eddie's _always_ been the kind of single-minded, egotistical bastard who couldn't swallow his pride long enough to save his job, his relationship, and his professional reputation in one stroke—too much of a cowboy to play the long game and wait until he had something on Drake that would stick—and she fucking _hates_ that she gave him a chance only to get it all thrown back in her face. What had she been thinking? That she could teach him to compromise, save him from himself? And for what? That arrogant, self-obsessed, self-righteous asshole, _utterly_ incapable of caring about anything bigger than himself, why did she _ever_... 

Unbidden—or perhaps at _someone else's_ bidding—a memory from their third real date raises a hand. 

_They were leaving the restaurant when a gap-toothed man who smelled faintly of urine had stepped up to Anne asking for change. Blanking him as she brushed past was so automatic that it had taken several paces before she realised Eddie wasn't behind her anymore._

_She'd turned to see Eddie fishing a note out of his wallet. She hadn't quite caught what either were saying, but she'd seen Eddie clap the man on the shoulder before they parted._

_Eddie Brock was not the sort to be embarrassed by being caught being taken in by a panhandler, but there was something self-conscious about his manner when he'd rejoined her that added an edge to his words. "His name's Derek O'Flanagan. Spoke to him last year when we were doing that piece on the homelessness crisis. He lost his insurance between jobs a couple of years back, never got back on his feet again."_

_Anne had sighed. "Eddie, you know he's just going to spend that on drugs or alcohol." By the time she thought better of it there's no taking back the thoughtless cliché, but Eddie had only shrugged._

_"Maybe," he'd said. "Can you blame him?"_

She'd read his piece on the homeless, back when Eddie Brock was just a guy she'd spoken to once or twice outside the courthouse, but you got so used to dividing the issue in your mind: there were the _tragic_ homeless, who were quoted in articles like Eddie's, quite separate from the _filthy_ homeless, who accosted you on the street for money. Not many people will bother to remind you that the difference might be all in your head. It was the moment she'd discovered that Eddie Brock was still Eddie Brock off-camera. 

There isn't a lot of space for idealism in Anne's field—not when you leave college with a head stuffed with obscene legal technicalities and law degree's worth of student loans on your shoulders. You might meet a few undergrads who think they're going to change the world, but by the time Anne had graduated, the accepted wisdom was that if you managed to pull an offer from one of the big firms, you took it: you put in your 90 hour weeks, you put up with the clients who thought they own you _and_ the law by proxy, and you took their goddamn money—and _then_ , once you'd done your time and paid your dues, _then_ you had the right to quit and start your own bleeding-heart pro-bono firm, dedicated to whatever pet cause you'd decided to champion. Assuming you still remembered how to care about saving the world by that point. Sometimes, Anne has trouble remembering whether she ever did. 

But Eddie had built his reputation on refusing to be bought. Investigative journalism has its cachet, but it was never any secret that it was _Anne's_ salary that paid for their fancy apartment—that _would_ have paid for their wedding, had they made it that far. And she'd been okay with that (whatever her mother might think). She could live with Eddie's terrible money sense, with his ego, his insecurities, everything—because supporting Eddie came with the luxury of feeling like somewhere out there, the great karmic scales balanced out. Maybe even came out a little in her favour. 

And, of course, he'd loved her. And she'd loved him. 

God, she'd really imagined that she could go on bankrolling the Brock Report with its targets' own money so long as they both understood where the lines were drawn. She'd been so wrong. 

So maybe they were _both_ using each other, a little. Not that Anne had ever put it in so many words in her own head—only with the clarity of hindsight does the subtext of their relationship prick into focus. 

(She doesn't say all of this to Venom. For better or worse, she doesn't need to.) 

**He made you feel like a better person than you felt you deserved to be,** Venom observes, thoughtful. 

"Guess that's one way to put it." Anne is _not_ sniffling, and it's taking a lot of concentration. She doesn't want to make out like that's the whole picture—it's not like that was the _only_ perk of dating Eddie Brock—but like hell Anne is getting into _that_ with Venom. "Are we done autopsying my relationship now?" 

**If you insist.** There's quiet for a little, and Anne has just about got herself back together when Venom says. **Your body is different from Eddie's... what is this?**

Anne does not get cramps at this part of her cycle, so there's little doubt which part of her anatomy Venom is poking at. "Do _not_ touch that!" 

**It is a strange organ. My last human host had one, but Eddie did not.**

"Well, no. Most _men_ don't." This would probably have made for a better snide retort had Anne not remembered a moment too late that, well, _yes_ —that's just factually correct, no sarcasm necessary. But possibly she deserves that one. 

**It is not necessary?**

"It's called a uterus. It's..." Oh, god, they're actually having this conversation. "It's _reproductive_. That's where we..." She casts for suitable vocabulary, in that narrow territory between too-clinical and too-colloquial. "...incubate our young." 

**Doesn't Eddie need one?**

Anne snorts. "If he ever wants 'young' he does. It doesn't have to be _his_." 

_**Ah**_ **,** purrs Venom, knowingly. **This is about** _ **sex**_ **.**

"What would _you_ know about sex?" 

**Your minds are full of it. The drive to reproduce is strong.**

It's happening. Anne is actually trying to talk about sex with an alien mindworm. "Okay, but with humans, you should realise that reproduction usually isn't the goal." 

**No. You have adapted it for... recreation. Bonding.** _ **Pleasure**_ **. It is most fascinating. You and Eddie have no offspring, but you have had plenty of** _ **sex**_ **.**

So much for skipping that topic of conversation. 

**Tell us** _ **more**_ **.**

There are so many places this might have gone—Anne can damn well _feel_ him riffling through her brain this time—but what he settles on is a memory of Eddie tied to the bed—naked, half-hard, whining for attention. "Anne... Annie... _Annieee_..." 

_Anne was ignoring him. Seated at her desk, dressed in one of her work suits (he did so love her suits), Anne's paperwork had her full attention. Well, most of her attention. In the corner of her eye, a continuous flutter of movement as Eddie writhed against his ties. As he panted, the skin of his chest was developing a lovely sheen of sweat. "Annie... how much longer do I have to wait?"_

_Anne had looked at him over her documents. It's a matter of some pride that she can, in fact, get some real work done during these sessions. "What did we agree on?"_

_A look of awkward remorse, as if he'd actually just remembered. "...are you really not done?"_

_"We could extend this for every time you make a sound."_

_"No! I can be quiet... I'll be good, I promise!"_

_"Good," said Anne, and proceeded to make him wait another full fifteen minutes before putting him out of his misery, crawling up the bed to kneel over his face._

God, they'd _both_ loved those sessions. 

_**That...**_ **is sex?**

"It was a game! The sex was just part of it." Dan's never been much into scenes like that—and after Eddie, that's almost a relief sometimes—he's just so much less _work._ Even she and Eddie rarely got around to it after the first year of their relationship. Maybe she's getting old. 

**Hrm. A show of dominance and submission. Primal. Ritualised. I** _ **like**_ **it.**

Anne rolls her eyes. "You _would_. Look, it's not _all_ about the scene, even with Eddie. It's..." About knowing yourself, your own body—about learning each other's. Everything from whether they like you starting the morning-after round before they've really woken up, to how to laugh it off when someone farts in the middle of things without ruining the mood. It's all the little details you can only learn about another person in bed. It's pleasure and intimacy, waking up in each other's arms, make-outs in the restaurant, in the hallway, on the couch—maybe not even leading to anything, just for its own sake. Eddie had always been an _amazing_ kisser... 

_**Was**_ **he? Tell us more.**

Anne sighs. "Look, I'm just saying, if you're expecting Eddie to be into submission 24/7, you're looking in the wrong place. He's not that kind of guy." 

**Ha! We know! He has far too much will, too much spirit. We have-**

"...been in his head, I get it. Can you get your creepy feelers out of that part of _mine_ , already? This stuff's personal." 

**Hmph. Fine.**

The road ahead has finally cleared, and there is, for a while, blessed silence in Anne's head. 

When Anne feels Venom riffling quietly through memories of what it was like to kiss Eddie later, she doesn't call him out on it. At least it's keeping him entertained. Even without the traffic, this has been just about the longest car ride of her life. 

* * *

Of course, they arrive just in time to save Eddie's bacon. Which is just as well, because after everything Anne has been through, if Eddie had needed rescuing from anything _less_ than imminent mortal danger, the real danger might have been _Anne_ herself. Another hour in the car, and Venom could probably have brought a Buddhist monk to the brink of murder. 

There's a long, strange moment as Venom passes between them, where she feels what it's like to be Eddie kissing Anne, to be Venom-being-Anne kissing Eddie for the first time, to be Eddie-being-Venom kissing Anne for the _last_ time—to want, to be needed, to be going home. 

Perhaps she'd have dwelt on that part longer, if not for the lingering memory of 'her' mouth crunching through someone's living spine still fresh in her mind, but... well. The aftertaste of human viscera on your tongue leaves a pretty strong impression. 

Through the windows and the monitors of the Life Foundation, she watches Venom show his team leader that he is _not_ weak, that has never been weak—watches him _prove_ the strength of his bond with a willing host. 

And then, she watches Venom die. She isn't close enough to hear him say goodbye. 

A week later, she still doesn't know how she feels about any of it. 

* * *

Eddie seems... fine, actually. Better than he has any right to be. But he's hiding something, and if that something might be how _not_ okay he is on the inside, that doesn't help. 

They talk about Venom, of course. But Anne doesn't know how to say, _I think your alien was in love with you_. _Maybe. Or maybe he just_ thought _he was. I don't know if a creature like Venom_ can _love, but if he could... does that mean something?_ She doesn't even know if she should say anything. Maybe Eddie knew. Maybe he's happier not knowing. 

**Author's Note:**

> New to the fandom, comments are love. (Kudos and all other forms of feedback much appreciated also.)


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